Look Back in Anger
by boredomsetsin13
Summary: Annie made it. She left, and made it. Steve didn't know that she regretted it, though.


Disclaimer: I do not own the "Outsiders" characters. Nor do I own the song this story is named after.

(Requested by Horselover98 on my Quizilla account.)

* * *

"Goddamn. Sonuva bitch. Sonuva bitch!"

The knocking sound coming from under the hood was becoming too loud to ignore. It had been progressing over the past week. Annie needed to get it put in order before she hopped onto I-44 later that evening.

She pulled the dark-blue, battered '50 Dodge Sedan into a slot by the gas pumps at seven o' clock. Promptly a tall, thin boy was standing by the driver's-side door of the Dodge.

"There somethin' I can help you with, ma'am?" the boy asked, leaning down to be more eye-level with the driver. His voice sounded as if it had just deepened into adulthood but was still new and young.

_I guess just as soon as your eighteenth birthday rolls around, it's mandatory for everyone to call you that_, Annie thought, bringing a smile to her thin lips. "Ma'am" had been one of her names for a little over two years. _Well, I guess I'm finally doin' things on my own at twenty years old._

The girl hadn't replied yet. _Is she mute_, the brown-haired boy asked himself. He decided to ask her something else. _Maybe she don't know anything about cars. Maybe it's her husband's ride, and she don't know how to put the transmission into reverse, or something._ That thought brought on a thin smile.

"Need some gas?" he asked in the tone of voice as if he had already asked that very same question too many times in the day.

She stared out of blue eyes at him. "Uh, . . . no, thanks. Mister, I don't know what's goin' on under that hood. It's makin' a knocking sound, and I got somewhere to be.

"It's a long ways from here, you know, Mister. I'm goin' to Hollywood after I go see my gramma in Derby, Kansas. Then it's on to Hollywood, California. . . . When I get there, they're gonna put me in shows . . . stuff like that . . . " she said.

He nodded, barely listening. She could talk a person's ears off, and he wasn't too interested in what she was selling. _Evie's probably tryin' to figure out just what skirt to wear on our date tonight. . . . I hope it's the shorter one. I can touch more of her smooth legs that way_, Steve thought. He wasn't interested in the girl's aspirations; he had his own things - his girl, his job, his father, school - to think about.

"You said there was a knockin' noise? Didja get oil put in it recently?" he asked.

"M' name's Annie. What's yours, Mister? I'd like to know before you start pawin' all over my car," Annie said.

_Boy howdy, she don't need to talk to me like that_, Steve thought bitterly.

Annie was as scatterbrained as a girl could get and still graduate from high school. It was already grating on the mechanic's nerves.

He had once tried to date a girl who couldn't keep her mind focused on one thing for too long, and it got old real fast. He decided he was done with one-track-minds . . . as long as they didn't have real nice legs, of course. He would readily make an exception for a smooth-legged girl any day.

"Steve. My name's Steve. Now you said there was knocking. When was the last time oil got put in?" he asked, frustrated that the driver wasn't answering his questions.

Annie swatted at the curly dark-brown hair that had fallen in front of her eyes.

"Well, Steve, I got some Valvoline put in about four days ago. Why? Ya don't think there was somethin' wrong with the oil, do ya?" she asked. He shrugged his shoulders.

He smirked. His boss always told him to be courteous to the customers, especially the ones that looked like they could tip well, but he was finding it difficult to talk to the thin woman sitting in her blue Dodge Sedan.

"Well, I'll have to look under the hood to look at the oil. Why don't ya pull it around to the side?" he asked, rather _told_ her. She nodded, popped the transmission into drive, and applied a little pressure to the gas pedal.

A blue Ked applied the brake, and she turned the car off.

"Ya wanna know what I think's wrong with my Dodge?" Annie asked as she walked over to the brown-haired boy who was standing by the front of the DX gas-station.

Steve half-smiled a tired smile and said, "What, ma'am?"

"You don't need to call me that every other sentence, Steve. I ain't a 'ma'am,' exactly. I'm only twenty, Mister," she said with a grin on her lips. The grin reached all the way up to her blue eyes.

He nodded. Without saying a word, he stepped around Annie and went over to the blue '50 Sedan.

* * *

With the hood raised and his head under it, Steve was muttering to himself. He was trying to ignore Annie's ramblings. She couldn't take the hint that he liked to look at cars alone.

"Now I think I'm gonna make it big in Hollywood, you know? I think I got one'a them personalities that can shine on the big-screen. I can be like Vivian Leigh or Natalie Wood, don't ya think? My mom doesn't think I can do anything like that, but I think I can. I know I can," she said.

Steve wasn't listening, but the last sentence caught his attention. "Ya really think you can?"

Annie nodded surely, earnestly, and a bit forcefully. _How dare that grease ball second-guess me like that_, Annie thought indignantly. "You really think you're that great of a mechanic?" she asked with a smirk at her lips and a questioning arch to her left eyebrow.

"Well, yeah, I think I'm all right. I can turn a car inside-out and make it right-side-in again," he said cockily.

She nodded. "How long ya been workin' with cars, Steve?" Annie asked.

"Awhile, Annie. A pretty long while. But I really like it. I think it's what I'm gonna be doin' for the rest of my whole damn life," he said. Steve's big, calloused hands were roaming over the car-parts as if it were a woman. "You got a pretty fine car here, you know?"

Annie nodded. There was a glow of misplaced maternity in her eyes. "Yeah. My parents got it for me about a year ago. They said they were real proud of me for graduatin'. They made it sound like I never would, though," she sighed.

"You graduated a year ago? I thought you were twenty?" Steve asked. He thougth she was trying to pull something over on him. She was a stranger, and if living as a hood taught you anything, it was to be suspicious.

"Well, ya see, Steve, I got held back when I was a kid. I had to do fourth grade all over again. Have you graduated yet?"

He shook his head. "Nope. Not quite yet. I do that next year if nothin' goes wrong." That got a laugh out of Annie.

* * *

After four more minutes of Steve thinking and mumbling to himself, he brought his head out from under the hood.

"Yeah, it's the oil, ma'am. I'm gonna put some DX motor oil in it," Steve said. She smiled in ignorance and nodded her head.

Annie opened the car door and sat in the driver's seat. Her legs were hanging out of the car while she waited, and the breeze made her skirt that was rolled up to an inch above her knees flutter.

Two minutes later, Steve came out of the DX, empty handed. He stood in front of Annie. "I gue-"

"You know, Mister, I think those bastards that put the Valvoline in my car the other night got somethin' in it. I bet it was dirt, Mister," Annie said, cutting across Steve.

"Yeah, maybe," he said with a simple smile on his face.

* * *

Steve and Annie talked well into the evening. Twice, a carload of boys pulled up for gas. While a slightly shorter boy with wheat-colored hair pumped the boys' gas, Steve watched. Annie seemed to sink back a little. She liked it when the person she was talking with to be paying all of their attention to her. _Him lookin' at the girl he's conversatin' with ain't a whole lot to ask for, I don't think_, the slightly-jealous girl thought with a frown on her face.

By the time the clock inside the building told that it was ten minutes to midnight, it was dark outside but the lights shining from the DX windows made it look like the time between storm clouds.

"Ah, hell!" Steve exclaimed. He was staring at the clock through the window in disbelief.

A wrinkle formed on Annie's forehead. "What's wrong?" she asked without much care. She knew what was coming. It was well past her time to move on to the road and he surely had somewhere important to be.

"What's wrong? I shoulda closed up an hour ago! Shit, Soda left two hours ago, and I was gonna close-up for him!" Steve said exasperatedly. "And what am I doin' instead? I'm standin' here, shootin' the shit with you."

"I've been havin' a good time," Annie said meekly. She felt stupid, pathetic, even, for being hurt by his words. _He doesn't want to talk to me_, she thought.

Steve rubbed at his mouth - a habit of his that Annie had noticed over the last few hours. "Evie, Annie! I had a date with her tonight! I was supposed to meet her over an hour ago. I'm not gonna be able to dig myself outta this one," he said.

She didn't want to do it, but a simple, believable story came to mind and she wanted to tell it to him. _At least it'll get him outta trouble with his girl_, Annie thought in spite of herself. The worry was plain on his face, by that point.

"Listen, Steve. Just tell your girl that a guy came by just before closing, and he had a little somethin' wrong with his car, and you didn't think it would take as long as it did to fix it. She'll believe it. . . . Hell, I'd even believe it, if my boy friend told me that story," Annie said with regret in her voice. She didn't think Steve noticed it; she figured he had enough things on his mind.

"All right, all right. Shit, I still gotta change your oil," he said, walking into the DX at the pace of someone who needed to get some place damn fast.

He changed the oil, and Annie merely stood there, watching him. There was a way about how Steve worked quickly and smoothly that made Annie curl her toes and grin. When he was done, he sighed. It was the sure sign of a Goodbye.

"Ya know, Steve, ya don't really talk like your a seventeen-year-old," Annie said, smiling at the young, tall, thin boy. _I'm gonna remember that dark hair and the way he's got it combed for a long, long time, I think_, Annie told herself.

"Yeah, well, you don't talk like your twenty," he said, unsmiling. She couldn't figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing. The matter was let go, as to not spoil her high spirits.

"Look, Annie, I really gotta cut outta here," Steve said to the curly-haired, thin girl. She nodded slowly, and began to dig around in her purse. After a moment, she produced a few bills.

"There's a tip in there for ya, Mister." He smiled, but didn't let it touch all the way up to his brown eyes. "I had a good time talkin' with ya, Steve," Annie said.

"Yeah, ma'am," Steve said, trying to hurry things along, trying to get Annie out of there so he could close-up and go see Evelyn O'Kelley.

"You know, Mister, when I get to Hollywood, my stage-name's gonna be 'Ann Sharlott,'" she said.

"All right."

"Well, 'bye, Mister," Annie said, turning towards her car. She held up a hand in a wave. Steve did the same, turned around, and walked inside the DX.

When Annie got to the end of the street, she stopped.

"Which way to go, Annie? Which way to go?" Annie hummed to herself.

Left was I-44. Right was Home, to Mom.

Annie fed the blue Sedan a little gas, and steered to the right. A minute later, she had a moment of clarity. Annie knew.

She knew the difference of being in love and loving someone. Being in love with the mechanic meant nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Annie most certainly knew the difference.

She turned the car into a parking lot, and headed back for I-44. _I'm gone_, she thought triumphantly to herself.

* * *

Seven years later, Steve Randle read in the newspaper that an "Ann Sharlott" was found dead in her hotel. The article said the the actress hadn't worked on a movie in several years. According to the report, she had taken too many sleeping pills.

Steve had seen a few of Ann Sharlott's movies. He couldn't believe it. A part of him had trouble believing that the girl he had spoken with for hours only seven years before, was dead now.

There was a picture of the young actress next to the article. The picture was several years old. He looked at her hair. She had dyed it a sandy-blonde.

"Huh," Steve said, looking at the curly-haired, blue-eyed girl. He hadn't believed that she would make it all the way to Hollywood, to the movies.

But she had.

Something he didn't know was, Annie regretted getting onto I-44 more than anything.


End file.
